A PNG-Australian music powerhouse blends new styles with traditional instruments and powerful social themes, writes Belinda Jackson.

The Sorong Samarai band. Credit: Claudia Sangiorgi Dalimore

A conch shell calls across the land; chants from the highlands of Madang Province follow. “One people, one soul, one destiny,” sings the Sorong Samarai band, a musical coalition of artists from across the island of New Guinea, which is split between Papua New Guinea and Indonesia.

From the far west in Sorong in West Papua, to Samarai Island in Milne Bay Province in the far east, the band travelled for three months, collecting sound and film to make what is now the signature track on a new album. Called Sorong Samarai, the song and the album are spearheaded by PNG-Australian musician, drummer and music producer Airileke Ingram.

The album has been 10 years in the making, says Airileke, whose mother is from Gabagaba village, an hour out of Port Moresby.

Based in his father’s homeland, in Queensland, Australia, on Gabbi Gabbi country on Queensland’s Sunshine Coast, Airileke runs record label, music publishing and music production company Gaba Musik with his partner Deline Briscoe.

Gaba Musik is also a merging of cultures: in Motu, Airileke’s family’s language, gaba means ‘drum’; in Gugu-Yalanji, Deline’s language from the rainforests of northern Australia, it means ‘rain’.

Airileke is a powerhouse for PNG and Australian First Nations music. Since 2021, Gaba Musik has produced Blaktivism, bringing activist music from the Pacific region – including PNG and West Papua – to Australian stages. Deline is the musical production’s artistic director, and Airileke’s Sorong Samarai band will provide the backing for the next production, in Melbourne in November.

Gaba Musik also produces Pasifix, a festival for contemporary Pacific Island music, supported by Australia’s Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade. Born during the COVID-19 pandemic, the original idea was to bring musicians from the motherlands to Australia, says Airileke. “But due to the border closures, I had to curate from islanders living within Australia, and I found incredible talent I didn’t know was living here.”

The biennial concert is coming up to its third production in 2025, with plans to next take place at Melbourne’s Sidney Myer Music Bowl. Airileke plans to take Pasifix touring from Melbourne to Brisbane and Port Moresby, with the 50th anniversary of PNG’s independence key in its plans. “I want it to become a flagship event, to create a two-way conversation between Australia and PNG, sharing PNG’s rich culture with Australians,” he says.

“PNG music does not necessarily have the commercial pull as, say New Zealand or Polynesian reggae – it does need to be subsidised, but we’re trying to put more value on indigenous knowledge and indigenous culture, and share that rich culture that PNG has.”

Some of the most beautiful music comes from the hardest, roughest places – South Africa during the apartheid era, blues music from Black USA, the music that comes out of West Papua, says Airileke. “Because of the oppression, songwriters have to be more poetic in how they speak about it and get the word out. I see a whole other genre emerging from Port Moresby, which is a really urban, loosely hip-hop style of music.”

In this interview with Paradise, he dubs it naka beat, a cut-down of the word kanaka, used to describe workers taken from the South Pacific islands, and used for labouring in the British colonies, also known as blackbirding.

“It was a derogatory word, now, naka is like the word ‘mate’ among these young rappers.”

He also says they’re the first generation to identify as being from the city. “Before that, my generation or my mum’s generation, everyone that lived in Moresby was from somewhere else in the country. And now we have a third generation, born in the settlements, and that’s all they know.”

And they’re fiercely political. “They’re talking about corruption, the pressure of the high cost of living, the minimum wage. They’re not stupid, they see what’s going on.”

Two artists to watch are Sprigga Mek (aka Allan Aufamau), whose debut album, Kanaka Messenjah (produced by Airileke and Stephen Maxwell) won Album of the Year at the 2023 PNG music awards, and DeSiz (aka Tim Masil).

They’re creating their music on laptops, making their own music clips, often sitting on the floor in a spare room – a far cry from lavish music producers’ usual studios.

“Sprigga is from Motu village of Hanuabada and Mekeo, outside Port Moresby, and he was one of the first musicians to catch naka beat, singing about rioting, corruption, issues affecting urban people and kids from the ghetto,” says Airileke. He’s performed at the world music festival WOMAD, in Adelaide and the Sydney Opera House in Australia, in Fiji, Vanuatu, and the US. “And DeSiz is the next kid coming up, he’s about to go gangbusters.”

Add to that list RnB singer Mereani Masani, whose songs might touch on love, teen pregnancy and, in her single, No More, the scourge of domestic violence – themes universal to the country.

“As a producer, I encourage artists to be conscious and speak out,” says Airileke. “And if you’re a rapper coming from the settlements of Port Moresby, you’ve nothing to lose. So, you have real freedom of expression.”

His other challenge is to make the music speak as the lyrics do, with a PNG identity.

Instead of taking sample beats from the internet, Airileke uses PNG’s traditional, distinctive kundu (drums) in production, bringing the kwakumba flute of Chimbu Province into Genamari, Sorong Samarai’s newest single, composed by singer-songwriter and multi-instrumentalist Richard Mogu, who is originally from Milne Bay Province.

“Of course, we’re all subject to dominant culture, especially Black American culture, but owning that and doing it in our own way is really respected by other Papua New Guineans.”

He and Sprigga are currently working on a track in 22 languages, one from every one of PNG’s provinces. “I really encourage the young artists to reach to their culture, because it’s unique. The rappers are pushing the culture. That’s their power.”

Back to his new album, Airileke started working on the title in 2016, in his Melbourne studio with West Papuan independence leader Benny Wenda, who shared some wisisi music from his village.

“It was just the most incredible sound I’d heard in a long time,” says Airileke. “I wrote the lyrics and the song right there and started layering it with the sound I’d recorded from our travels in West Papua and PNG in 2014.”

Kwa kumba flutes added the spirit of Highlands PNG, pairing with the trance-like wisisi music from West Papua’s highlands, Manus Island‘s garamut drums and traditional songs from the West Papuan island of Biak are all woven into the signature track.

There’s a geographic and cultural connection across the island of New Guinea, a songline that runs through the latitudes and the similarity of terrains. It’s the feeling of connectivity – often lost between the two sides of the island – from Sorong to Samarai.

“Some of that isolation was geographic, some of it was political. But music and social media have no borders – there are not many other art forms that can do that, that can transcend isolation. That’s what the band Sorong Samarai is about.

“PNG is the most linguistically diverse place on Earth, and every language represents culture,” says Airileke. “I think a beautiful thing about the country is the language.

“This is the new sound for PNG.”

The Sorong Samarai album is available through Gaba Musik.

This is an edited version of an original article first published in the October-December 2024 issue of Paradise, the in-flight magazine of Air Niugini.